Two temple guardians, anonymous, c. 1300 - c. 1400

Temple guardians are placed at the entrance to a temple to ward off evil. Each of these figures holds a vajra for crushing ignorance. Their open and closed mouths represent a and un, the first and final syllables of Siddham (a script used to write Sanskrit): these syllables symbolize all spoken sounds and scripts, thus all knowledge. Worshippers who enter the temple
precinct through the guardians’ gate symbolically acquire this knowledge.

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Purchased with the support of the BankGiro Loterij, the M.J. Drabbe-fonds/Rijksmuseum Fonds, made available by ABN-AMRO, the Mondriaan Stichting and the Vereniging Rembrandt, with additional funding from the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds